I'm a life member of the SAD (stopped and dropped) club, and did my apprenticeship with two Deauvilles. However my 'best' SAD moment was as I went into the car park on my Biffer for the annual IAM conference with fully loaded panniers and top box after a long time in the saddle. I failed to notice a drain, dropped the front wheel into it causing the bike to stop unexpectedly. It was leaning over but when I put my foot out the curb stopped me getting it out far enough so with great dignity we fell over with my leg trapped under the bike and the rest of me in the bushes. I was well and truly stuck and had to wait until another car turned in and fortunately the driver was young enough to help lift the bike.

Another reminder that bikes bring us down to earth if we get overconfident or too cocky!

ps welcome to membership of the SAD club.....

I don't think I've laughed so hard since the Trotters dropped the chandelier in Only Fools PRICELESS

If I had to hazard a guess as to where it all went wrong, I would suggest you weren't slipping the clutch with enough revs on.

OR were in second gear .

Another SAD club member here (along with most of us at some time or another). Dropped an excruciatingly heave cruiser at a filling station at 0 mph when foot slipped on patch diesel. A group of little snots riding 50cc twist and go's stood around watching having a good laugh at my expense but pride slightly recovered when they saw me lift the bike upright again. No damage as crash bars took the bike as it went over.

Seeing as we are all in a confessing mood, here's my contribution. This is an excerpt from my web site and was written with a non-motorcycling audience in mind. We were preparing for a long weekend in the Tarn with our motorcycle club (Brittany Bikers: http://bbb.icyboards.net/) and just about everything that could go wrong to prevent us from going had gone wrong. Or, so I thought...

...After a quick inspection of the rest of the bike, it was declared ready and all that remained was to wash it and lubricate the chain. Washing was soon accomplished and I heaved the bike up onto the centre stand so I could lubricate the chain. Unfortunately, I was facing up a hill and the resulting geometry meant that the back wheel was sitting on the ground with the front in the air. This is the opposite of what normally happens and is quite useless for lubricating the chain as you cannot rotate the back wheel. I pondered the situation for a moment and had a sudden flash of inspiration, I could simply face the bike down the hill instead of up.

You might think that this was a good idea but that would be because you have never tried hauling a 1000cc motorcycle onto the centre stand uphill!

I nearly made it. The bike teetered for a moment right on the point where the weight starts working with you rather than against you and then, slowly and inexorably and despite my best efforts to the contrary, it started to go back the other way.

At this point we should consider the mechanics of putting a motorcycle on the centre stand. You are standing to the left of the motorcycle with one hand on the left handlebar to stabilise the bike, one hand on the grip at the left rear of the bike to provide upward force, one foot on the centre stand to push it down and one foot on the ground to hold you up. Note that all limbs are in use.

Next, we should consider the layout of motorcycle controls. The hand-operated front brake is on the right handlebar and the foot-operated rear brake is by the right footrest. Note that all means of stopping the bike are on the side opposite from where you are standing so, even if you had a spare limb, it couldn't reach any of these controls anyway. You should also consider the fact that the bike is now travelling downhill in an increasingly uncontrolled fashion...

At this point, the result became inevitable and the bike went down accompanied by a mighty crashing noise, a considerable amount of strong and intemperate language and the removal of a large patch of skin from my right leg which did nothing whatsoever to reduce the aforementioned strong and intemperate language.

Fortunately, the damage wasn't too serious although it didn't feel like it at the time. This is the first bike in my life that I had purchased new and quite possibly the coolest thing I have ever owned and I have put a great deal of time and effort into keeping it nice. Seeing it lying on the floor damaged made me feel quite ill. Time has added a little perspective and I no longer feel quite so bad about it. There's a couple of minor paint chips that are going to have to be dealt with but the most serious damage was to the clutch lever which was bent up like a banana. The lever is made of alloy which, if you bend it too far, becomes brittle. Had I tried to straighten it, it would probably have snapped off leaving me with no working clutch. In its bent form, it was just usable (although far from comfortable) so I decided to leave it alone and try and find a replacement the next day - the last day before our trip!

[...]

The next morning, after finally finishing my translation project, I went off to our local Honda dealer, Bromoto, in search of a clutch lever. The nice young lady behind the counter searched through the box of levers and sadly informed me that they didn't have one. However, I could plainly see one that looked a lot like the right thing and that was for a similar model of Honda. I asked if I could take it outside and compare it to mine which she graciously agreed to let me do. I couldn't detect any difference whatsoever except for a very minor cosmetic detail. I then asked the nice young lady if I could return it if I got it home and it wouldn't fit. The mechanic overheard this conversation and chimed in with "why don't we try it here?". No sooner said than done. Tools were fetched out, the old lever was removed and the new one was fitted. It was a perfect fit! This cheered me up out of all proportion to the actual facts of the matter because it felt like we had "turned the corner" and the worst was behind us. When I got the bill and found out that they had only charged me for the lever and not the fitting, I was even happier! It also helped that the lever was quite reasonably priced for a genuine Honda part and cost about half what I had been expecting to pay.

It's amazing what a little bit of luck and a friendly gesture can do to turn your day around.

I used to thoroughly enjoy cleaning my biffer in the back yard with a couple of beers in the sun and this particular days was looking like an ideal opportunity.

I stormed out in my garage slippers (dont ask) and popped the old girl up on the centre stand and duly slipped sending it over to its right hand side accompanied by a crunch of driveway gravel grinding against fairing, heat guard and crankcase cover.

Snapped the brake lever, scuffed the crankcase cover, bar end and heat shield but was able to fix it up from spares from my dealer. Good as new.

Done it twice with a Harley Sportster (they have a very fwd-pivoted side stand) and the VFR800. The viffer was worse - pushing it out of the garage in an arc (same procedure every single morning) the front wheel dropped over the concrete apron and onto the grass. Bike fell away from me so no chance to save. Damage was front brake lever, mirror (snapped) and scuffs to right engine case and lower fairing. Parts courtesy eBay, Respray lower fairing

Fell off when I tried to turn the bike round on sloping cobble surface in Guisborough N Yorks. By the time my foot touched the ground, the bike was 30 deg. Off the vertical and beyond the point of no return. Me and the bike both went down Lost the screen and upper front fairing. Lots of sympathy from the crowd who helped me get my bike upright. Carried on to Whitby but aching ribs for a fortnight. Moral :keep away from side slopes, cobbles, gravel, loose chippings, disc locks and softground

Did this twice on my big Bandit at some cost in broken plastic, levers etc, once in 'public' - the shame of it. The usual routine: stalled / going / gone. Nearly happened on the Biffer a few days ago but managed to catch it before the point of no return. I managed to pick up the Bandit, just, ditto after high-siding it (very public and very expensive). I don't remember having any trouble when I was a nipper 'catching' bikes before the point of no return, or picking them up if I'd put them down the road. Either they're much heavier now or I'm less fit...or both!

I had a tankslapper once on the VFR. Following a bloke on an old Phaser in the wet, I thought I'd give it a bit - but still getting used to the big fat torque at fairly low revs. Saved it though, but must've looked like corkscrew as my feet instinctlively left the pegs and my legs popped out straight either side.It's a testament to the biffer that I saved it, and it was probably caused by me sitting so close to the tank and being only a little bloke.